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aldersprigThis is set in Cynara's Doomsday Academy, several years after its founding. Kheper is a Year Nine Student.
Nine children were waiting in Cynara's classroom. Nine Third-year students, twelve years old and fresh out of Ascha's tender care.
Every year, Ascha said the same thing to her, don't scare them, Aunt Cya.
And every year, Cya said back to her crewmate's daughter, oh, come on, you know me.
Yes, I do. And they'd both laugh, and roll their eyes, and Cya would walk away wondering what, exactly, was so frightening about her.
Don't scare them. She walked into the classroom and smiled at the children. "Hello, and welcome to Survival Level One." She looked around at the children - bright-eyed kids, two years in and old hands at this whole school thing. "Over the next five years, I'm going to teach you how to survive in just about any circumstance."
They shared looks amongst themselves. Cya could read in some faces all that in five years and in others that's going to take five years?
She'd been teaching this class for five years. She'd gotten used to both reactions.
She smiled at all of them again. "Pull out paper and a pencil. We're going to start with an exercise." She'd done this with her kids. She'd done this with her grandkids. If the fates were kind, she'd probably be teaching this to her great-grandkids in a few years. "Imagine that you are, say, building a small town for thirty-five people. List everything that you will need for their survival." She held up a hand. "There are no wrong answers, and I full expect that every one of you will have different answers." She looked over their faces again. "You've all come from very different places, after all."
And there, there was the thing Ascha kept warning Cya about. Fear.
Cya swallowed the sigh and made the smile a little wider and, she hoped, a little more reassuring. Nineteen-year-old Addergoole graduates were easy. Why were thirteen-year-old students so hard?
Nine children were waiting in Cynara's classroom. Nine Third-year students, twelve years old and fresh out of Ascha's tender care.
Every year, Ascha said the same thing to her, don't scare them, Aunt Cya.
And every year, Cya said back to her crewmate's daughter, oh, come on, you know me.
Yes, I do. And they'd both laugh, and roll their eyes, and Cya would walk away wondering what, exactly, was so frightening about her.
Don't scare them. She walked into the classroom and smiled at the children. "Hello, and welcome to Survival Level One." She looked around at the children - bright-eyed kids, two years in and old hands at this whole school thing. "Over the next five years, I'm going to teach you how to survive in just about any circumstance."
They shared looks amongst themselves. Cya could read in some faces all that in five years and in others that's going to take five years?
She'd been teaching this class for five years. She'd gotten used to both reactions.
She smiled at all of them again. "Pull out paper and a pencil. We're going to start with an exercise." She'd done this with her kids. She'd done this with her grandkids. If the fates were kind, she'd probably be teaching this to her great-grandkids in a few years. "Imagine that you are, say, building a small town for thirty-five people. List everything that you will need for their survival." She held up a hand. "There are no wrong answers, and I full expect that every one of you will have different answers." She looked over their faces again. "You've all come from very different places, after all."
And there, there was the thing Ascha kept warning Cya about. Fear.
Cya swallowed the sigh and made the smile a little wider and, she hoped, a little more reassuring. Nineteen-year-old Addergoole graduates were easy. Why were thirteen-year-old students so hard?
no subject
Date: 2014-08-04 11:10 am (UTC)Speaking of which, considering their own experiences at Addergoole, why haven't Boom tried to do something to get their own kids out of going there? We see with Yoshi that the staff still haven't solved the abuse issues, and as they're 25 years into the program at that point it's pretty evident they never well.
edit: I know I've harped on the whole 'why don't parents try to save their kids from Addergoole' thing many times before. And I'll admit now that at least post-Apocalypse there are benefits to sending your kids to Addergoole that could outweigh the 30% chance of serious abuse; namely sufficient food, shelter and protection so they don't die, as well as good magical instruction. If the parents aren't in a position to guarantee a steady supply of those things then it might be worth the risk. But Boomtown has all those things. There's no possible benefit I can see to Boom sending their kids to Addergoole that would outweigh the risks of abuse. Abuse that all the members of Boom have already experienced and which we've seen to come to pass to at least one of their kids in the DW fics. The only reason I can see why they wouldn't act on this would be to avoid a confrontation with the Addergoole staff. Except Boom has never backed down from a fight, the exact opposite most of the time, it's one of the major things they're known for.
Cheers,
Kuro_Neko
no subject
Date: 2014-08-04 02:36 pm (UTC)Part of it is also that most of Boom doesn't blame the school for their own abuse, they blame the individuals who did it.
(The except may be the one who was not abused, Howard).
And, TBH, most of Boom's kids go through school pretty easily, and Yoshi admits that 50% of his problem was his own cockiness.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-04 02:54 pm (UTC)Cheers,
Kuro_Neko
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Date: 2014-08-04 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-11 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-11 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-23 07:43 pm (UTC)When Leo sent Ruki off to Addergoole, the danger he saw wasn't the school itself but the Other Students. He thus prepared his daughter for the eventuality of being stuck in a school with a bunch of people who may or may not be (or become) Monsters. In a sense, he sort of buys into the preparation-by-experience aspect of the school's design, though not in the way Regine et al. intended. (And Viddie, he doesn't have a say in whether he goes anyway, but he does try to make sure he can at least defend himself.)
As for why he didn't fight sending her to Addergoole in the first place, it's mostly because he knew on some level that none of them were able to give the kids a proper education. It was only about a decade after the "apocalypse" and at least two or three decades before Cya started her city at all, let alone started a school. Plus, he respects his Mentor at the very least.
Not to mention the whole crazy anime-protagonist-delusion thing. You don't just go take down an institution like that with your teachers unless they had some sort of ulterior motive making them the Big Bad and that's just not how his plot line went at the time, y'know? >.> And neither of his kids have anything really happen to them (or he probably would've attempted to take down the school and possibly even gotten himself killed).
By the time he's actually in a mental position where he might think about taking down Addergoole, they're a couple generations removed from his own kids going to school and the emotional impact of his descendants being dragged off is somewhat lessened.
And by then they've got their own school.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-23 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-23 10:52 pm (UTC)